If you are looking to download the user’s manual of an electronic product that you own but it is nowhere to be found on the manufacturer’s website, you might as well try a search on Amazon.com. The site hosts PDF manuals of thousands of electronic products including those of items that have either been discontinued or are no longer available for sale on Amazon.com. The user manuals are primarily hosted on two Amazon servers – images-amazon.com and ssl-images-amazon.com – and here’s how you can find the one you are looking for. Go to Google and type the following query. Replace Read more

A few friends have only recently become Mac-converts! I know! What took them so long?!?! Anyway, they always come with the same questions about 3rd party software etc- so here is a list of what I personally consider to be the must-have applications when you first get on your mac from another, strange operating system. Website: http://www.mattjarvis.co.uk/article/mac-os-x-must-haves

Your files, anywhere Any file you save to Dropbox also instantly saves to your computers, phones, and the Dropbox website. 2GB of Dropbox for free, with subscriptions up to 100GB available. Your files are always available from the secure Dropbox website. Dropbox works with Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. Works even when offline. You always have your files, whether or not you have a connection. Dropbox transfers just the parts of a file that change (not the whole thing). Manually set bandwidth limits — Dropbox won’t hog your connection. Website: Dropbox Website: Dropbox for ucl.ac.uk email address Read more

Want to learn the fundamentals of electronics in a fun, hands-on way? With Make: Electronics, you’ll start working on real projects as soon as you crack open the book. Explore all of the key components and essential principles through a series of fascinating experiments. You’ll build the circuits first, then learn the theory behind them! Build working devices, from simple to complex You’ll start with the basics and then move on to more complicated projects. Go from switching circuits to integrated circuits, and from simple alarms to programmable microcontrollers. Step-by-step instructions and more than 500 full-color photographs and illustrations will Read more

The Processing Javascript library has been adapted for use on the iPhone. iProcessing is an open programming framework to help people develop native iPhone applications using the Processing language. It is an integration of the Processing.js library and a Javascript application framework for iPhone.

Dropbox, the app we all (at least many of us) know and love, has a plethora of advanced uses to make life so much easier in managing data between multiple computers and online. We’ve posted several roundups of tips and tricks for Dropbox and now we present our ultimate toolkit and guide. We’ve pulled all our tips and tricks together and added quite a few more. Additionally, share your Dropbox tips and tricks and we’ll update the list to share the fun with everyone. Dropbox? Not familiar with Dropbox? Let me start out by simply saying, Dropbox is awesome. I Read more

ONull is an image based Vector Generator for Mac OSX. It allows the user to convert images into rasterized vector graphics. This tool was developed to give graphic designers the ability to transform small images from the Internet into printable and editable graphics. Website: http://www.onull.net/

The Document Foundation, which coordinates development of LibreOffice, a new, free and open office suite, has reached an important development milestone significantly ahead of schedule. LibreOffice 3.3 shipped this week; it’s the first, stable, road-ready version of the suite. A large, 100+ community of developers has been attracted to the project, and while it’s still clearly under construction, it’s an impressive showing in a short time. Website: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/

Macs have some great built-in keyboard shortcuts, but if you want to create custom or global shortcuts that perform more complicated tasks, you’ll need to do a little extra legwork. Here’s how to turn virtually any action into a keyboard shortcut Website: http://lifehacker.com/5749811/turn-any-action-into-a-keyboard-shortcut-on-your-mac?skyline=true&s=i

Slade has a UCL recycling point for batteries. Located inside the main entrance, the box is orange and black in the shape of a very oversized battery. Please take advantage of this recycling point for any used batteries.

There are many applications available at UCL Clusters that would be useful to Slade students, such as Photoshop It’s worth noting that some Clusters, such as those in UCL Libraries, are open 24 hours at certain times of year. Full list of software is on this webpage: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/staff/purchasing/software/software_bid/applications

An up to date list of computer software available to UCL students for use on your own computer: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/students/windows/software Adobe Students get 80% off the retail price. Order direct from Adobe AutoCAD Free copies of AutoCAD is available to students from the AutoCAD website. Microsoft Microsoft are once again doing the Ultimate Steel For Office Mac

OpenStreetBlock is a web service for turning a given lat/lon coordinate (e.g. 40.737813,-73.997887) into a textual description of the actual city block to which the coordinate points (e.g. “West 14th Street bet. 6th Ave. & 7th Ave”) using OpenStreetMap data. There are likely many applications for such a service. It should be quite useful any time you might need to succinctly describe a given location without using a map. Website: http://transit.frumin.net/openstreetblock/